Technical Article

Deeper and deeper

So I'm back State-side, and feel like I've finally stopped reeling from my trip to Asia. I stopped in Kuala Lumpur and in Singapore, and had an absolutely fabulous time in both places.

I got to speak to some partners and SEs while out there, and really get a feel for the people and issues in the region. I also got to give a couple of talks and keep spreading the DC love to anyone that would listen, as I tend to do. I think the sessions went pretty well, despite minor technical difficulties, as you may have noted from Jeff's blog, as he sat in on the electrifying session.

Not even the weather could stop iRules and iControl, though, so solider on we did, sans-projector. I'm here to tell you, if you haven't talked through code with zero visuals, in a region that isn't natively English speaking...it's a real treat. The audience was fantastic, though, and things came through all right.

The next stop was SIngapore for an all day iRules deep dive. Boy did we dive. By the end of the day I had every single participant using the iRule editor and writing actual iRules code to meet the requirements I set out. It was awesome to watch the room split into groups and work together to not only find a solution, but to beat the other teams to the punch for some oh-so-tasty schwag. Then we had even more fun trying to out-geek each other by adding in optimizations we'd covered earlier in the day.

This was my first all-day course and the first time we've really gotten this hands-on and deep in training, but I'm here to tell you it won't be the last. We covered topics from iRules basics and structure, all the way through to iRule Development and Troubleshooting tips, how to plan for building your code, optimization tips and tricks, etc. I was supremely pleased with how receptive people were, and how much they seemed to gain from actually getting to "touch" the boxen, as it were.

Soon I'll be off to preach the good word some more, flying the DC colors high as always. Maybe someday I'll be heading to your area. Would that be valuable? If so drop me a line so I can make sure to make a note of it and see what the upper-ups think about me making a trip out to tip a few...err - do some training - in your neighborhood.